The background description provided herein is for the purpose of generally presenting the context of the disclosure. Work of the presently named inventors, to the extent it is described in this background section, as well as aspects of the description that may not otherwise qualify as prior art at the time of filing, are neither expressly nor impliedly admitted as prior art against the present disclosure.
Object detection systems are used, for example, on vehicles to detect objects forward, rearward or on a side of a vehicle. The object detection sensors may be used during parking maneuvers, when cruise control is active, and/or to detect an oncoming vehicle. Two examples of an object detection system are a time-of-flight (TOF) system and an image sensing system.
A TOF system includes at least one TOF sensor, which is used to detect a distance between the sensor and an object. Example TOF sensors are radar sensors and near infrared spectroscopy sensors. A TOF system measures the amount of time for a signal transmitted from the TOF system to travel to an object, reflect off of the object and return to the TOF sensor. As such, a TOF system may be used to detect distances between, for example, a vehicle and objects in an environment surrounding the vehicle.
An image sensing system may include image sensors, such as a charge-coupled device (CCD) or an array of complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) active-pixel sensors. The image sensors convert an optical image to an electric signal, which is used to generate an image representing an environment forward, rearward, and/or on a side of a vehicle. Image data from the image sensors may be used to detect objects in the environment of the vehicle.